Ubuntu – Can’t save files to second hard drive

firefoxpartitioningpermissions

I just bought a new laptop with a 512GB SSD and a 1TB HDD. I installed Ubuntu on the SSD (using UEFI) and left the HDD for storage. I had Windows on it, but I deleted it. It had two recovery partitions left and an EFI partition. I assigned most of the left over space as an ext4 partition to use for data, with mountpoint /BHDD. I left 100GB as unallocated in case I decide to revive Windows). I created symbolic links to my Documents, Pictures, Downloads and Music folders in my home directory. However, I can't download files to them – I get an error "Invalid Save permissions". I can create and delete folders or text files on /BHDD.

I am really confused what is wrong.

Edit: Output from ls -l ~

total 28  
drwxr-xr-x 2 bogdan bogdan 4096 Aug 27 19:22 Desktop  
lrwxrwxrwx 1 bogdan bogdan   22 Aug 26 21:29 Documents -> /BHDD/bogdan/Documents  
lrwxrwxrwx 1 bogdan bogdan   22 Aug 26 21:30 Downloads -> /BHDD/bogdan/Downloads  
-rw-r--r-- 1 bogdan bogdan 8980 Aug 26 21:14 examples.desktop  
lrwxrwxrwx 1 bogdan bogdan   18 Aug 26 21:30 Music -> /BHDD/bogdan/Music  
lrwxrwxrwx 1 bogdan bogdan   21 Aug 26 21:30 Pictures -> /BHDD/bogdan/Pictures  
drwxr-xr-x 2 bogdan bogdan 4096 Aug 27 00:21 Public  
drwxr-xr-x 2 bogdan bogdan 4096 Aug 27 00:21 Templates  
drwxr-xr-x 2 bogdan bogdan 4096 Aug 27 00:21 Videos

Output of sudo lsblk -o NAME,FSTYPE,SIZE,MOUNTPOINT,LABEL,ROTA,MODEL

sudo lsblk -o NAME,FSTYPE,SIZE,MOUNTPOINT,LABEL,ROTA,MODEL  
NAME   FSTYPE   SIZE MOUNTPOINT LABEL      ROTA MODEL  
sda             477G                          0 SAMSUNG MZNTN512  
├─sda1 vfat     487M /boot/efi                0   
└─sda2 ext4   428.8G /                        0   
sdb           931.5G                          1 HGST HTS721010A9  
├─sdb1 vfat     500M            ESP           1   
├─sdb2 ext4     818G /BHDD                    1   
├─sdb3 swap     7.6G [SWAP]                   1   
├─sdb4 ntfs     852M            WINRETOOLS    1   
└─sdb5 ntfs     9.2G            Image         1

Update: Interstingly, I can download torrents to the HDD using the default client provided with 16.04 – Transmission

Update2: I installed Google Chrome today just to test whether it will be experiencing the same problem and it is not. I can save files with Chrome wherever I want, so it seems like the problem is to do with Firefox.

Update3: Tried resetting my Firefox profile with mv ~/.mozilla ~/.mozilla.old and using a clean one, however the problem still persists. Also tried reinstalling Firefox by first completely removing it from synaptic and then installing it again with synaptic. The issue is still present.

Update4: I have changed the ownership of /BHDD using chown username:username /BHDD and also set the read/write permissions using sudo chmod 755 /BHDD, but Firefox is still unable to save to this drive.

Best Answer

Ok, I just redid some of the things that I have listed above as not solving the problem and it went away - no idea why. Here is what I redid:

Reinstalled Firefox again through Synaptic - not with the button for reisntallation, but instead removed it completely and then installed it (probably no difference). I left my user files as they were, so it loaded all my extensions and options when I started it for the first time.

Afterwards, I set permissions with sudo chmod 755 /BHDD (which was around the 4th or 5th time of me doing it).

Then finally, I changed the ownership again with chown -R useername:username /BHDD and also chown -hR useername:username /BHDD. (I had also done these a few times).

Next, I opened Firefox and I could download stuff wherever I wanted. Black magic.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to combine separate partitions created by initial install of kubuntu

Open the other partition in the file browser and press ctrl+L. You will be shown a path. Copy it. Then open a terminal and enter

cd "[whatever path]"

Where [whatever path] is the path you copied. Keep the quotes. They don't do any harm and make things easier if there are spaces or some other characters in the path. This will set your location in the current terminal to the mount point of your second partition.

Then enter these commands:

sudo chown -R [your user name] .
sudo chmod -R 777 .
sudo chown -R root "lost+found"
sudo chmod -R 700 "lost+found"

This will set the rights the way you want them to be. The first command makes you the owner of everything on the partition. The second command gives you all rights to it, but also every other user of the computer, in case you want to have several accounts and share files this way. If you don't want to do so, change 777 to 700 (others can't do anything) or to 722 (others can only read). The last 2 commands set everything back to the previous state for the (hidden) folder "lost+found" which is a special folder which you probably never will not have to use.

Ubuntu – Storing data on second HDD, mounting

Best not to use /mnt, but create a new /mnt/data or just /data. You may want other mounts in /mnt and those would remove the data partitions (I have done that in testing a /mnt of something).

After you copy all your data folders like Music to the partition on your other drive. Unmount your temporary mount if it is just temporary.

NOTE: The mount point can be anywhere. If it's in your /home or /media folders it will show up under "Places". If it's directly off "/" or /mnt it will not. I prefer /mnt so I do not see it other than thru the links.

sudo mkdir /mnt/data
sudo chown $USER:$USER /mnt/data
sudo chmod -R a+rwX /mnt/data

Note: The big "X" will also not make files executable unless they were executable to begin with. find your UUID, entry below shows example with UUID, must be yours

sudo blkid

Edit fstab with your UUID, use ext4 or depending on format:

sudo -H gedit /etc/fstab

UUID=a55e6335-616f-4b10-9923-e963559f2b05 /mnt/data ext4 relatime 0 2

Verify entry is ok, if no errors it is, if manually mounted as above unmount first:

sudo mount -a

from home (cd ~ if not at home) so default location of link is in /home/$USER cannot have duplicate entries, so move current to temporary location, repeat for each folder you want to move.

mv Music oldMusic

Music is then also the folder in the partition mounted as /mnt/data

ln -s /mnt/data/Music

Or link all folders with one command:

for i in echo /mnt/data/*;do ln -s $i; done

You can delete oldMusic after you confirm everything is ok.

it then should be this with l as first char for link.

fred@Z170N:~$ ll
lrwxrwxrwx  1 fred fred     15 Jun 10  2017 Music -> /mnt/data/Music/

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to combine separate partitions created by initial install of kubuntu

Ubuntu – Storing data on second HDD, mounting

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